


sweet creature

by whiskeylemon



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 06:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11777001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeylemon/pseuds/whiskeylemon
Summary: somewhere on another earth, iris takes a dream job offer in metropolis... only now she needs a new home for her beloved pooch //a teeny tiny queenwest drabble.





	sweet creature

**Author's Note:**

> so i'm a sucker for queenwest even though i know it's wildly unpopular in the flarrowverse but i mean, can you really deny how hot they look standing next to each other??? no, you cannot. so here's a queenwest au based off of this au i saw on tumblr that was basically begging me to write it even though i can't write for shit: here.
> 
> “i’m moving and i know this is a long-shot but want my dog?? you’re the only other person it ever liked and i hate you but i love it” au

**Sorry, Iris. Ronnie's allergic :C**  
  
Caitlyn had been her first choice, all things considering. On top of being one of the few people Iris could trust with not just her own life, but Opal's as well, she had sort of been gunning for the recent newlywed to take the plunge and adopt her pup, since she knew kids were still sometime in the future for her and the new hubby. Dammit, Ronnie.  
  
**I don't know, Iris... I can barely make time for myself, let alone a dog. But I'll ask around for you! No Opal gets left behind!!**  
  
Barry had only been second to Caitlyn because she knew he was a busy body. She was actually surprised he ever found the time to take care of himself, let alone an animal -- and while she knew the offer to find a home for Opal was well-intended, it just... didn't feel right leaving her with someone she wasn't familiar with; someone she couldn't call and let know that she was in town so she could see her, or someone who wouldn't snap her pictures every single day. Someone who didn't love Opal every bit as much as Iris did was out of the question.  
  
So, her search continued -- with Wallace, of all people.   
  
**dad's got me taking a full semester and u know that dog hates me -__-**  
  
Okay, so she figured Wally would be a pretty long shot. Opal was very particular about the company she kept after six long years, and her only brother didn't quite make the cut in her beloved Op's life.  
  
Of course, that also knocked Linda out of the running as well.  
  
**no dogs allowed at my apartment :/ and opal doesn't rlly like wally too well, does she??**  
  
She supposed she couldn’t begrudge her brother and his girlfriend of all their fun.  
  
**I'm at S.T.A.R. Labs more than I'm at home, otherwise you know I would! Also slightly afraid she’ll eat my chinchilla.**  
  
Cisco had been her last desperate attempt at a home in Central City for her Opie, although he was on thin ice after assuming that Opal would eat anything she had to kill with her bare paws. She wasn’t an animal! At least, not so much in that sense...  
  
Which brought her all the way back to square one: what was she going to do with Opal?  
  
Not taking the job was out of the question. She’d been busting her ass for long enough, and when Perry White(’s very own EA) personally called to ask if she’d be interested in a position for one of the editors directly beneath him, she’d said yes, without a second thought. She hadn’t thought about the toll of moving hundreds of miles, across cities and states, away from family and friends and her most beloved pooch.  
  
‘Pooch’ might have been pushing the term. Opal was still spry for nine years old, and she had really only known two homes, excluding her very own mother’s womb -- and the second home was most  _definitely_  not an option.  
  
Dating Oliver Queen had been… a whirlwind, to say the very least.   
  
She’d been a younger, more naïve version of herself, foolish for letting him get even a piece of her heart – and he’d had nice arms and a great body and pretty nice butt (for a white boy) and he was surprisingly charming and he’d really made an impression on Opal and –  
  
Nope.  _Definitely not_. He'd lost her trust long ago.  
  
Her senior year at Central City University had come with plenty of complications without the help of Oliver Queen, but he’d managed to nose his way into her life anyway. And she’d heard plenty of stories beforehand, of course; billionaire playboy of Star City, an active party boy and serial cheater with a past so shady that not even Iris’s most vivid imagination could conjure up just the extent of things he’d done. For someone going into the field of journalism, she didn’t just like to keep up with the gossip pages for fun.  
  
He’d ended up dropping off the radar for a little while. Most news outlets and gossip columns had plenty to say about Oliver Queen’s good night turned ugly… of course, not many had much to say about the apparent overdose, but rather the fact that it was his long-time girlfriend’s sister who called 911 after waking up beside him in his hotel room. Naturally, the cheating scandal seemed to get more publication than the drug problem.  
  
In fact, Iris was sort of under the impression that he’d died – she’d heard enough about the Kendalls and Kims and Kylies of the world without adding some reckless rich boy with shits of gold to the mix, even if he had been a very attractive addition to her morning gossip column.  
  
He had been the last person she'd expected to run into walking out of the dean's office -- although, after a moment, she couldn't stop her mind from wandering to the worst: playboy Oliver Queen was making a move on CCU's dean, probably. Dean Reddington was a little older than most of the women she'd seen him with, but whatever floated his boat of sexual fantasies... Iris had simply been walking Opal around campus, and even then the dog had made a beeline for the rich playboy, but Iris simply gave a small tug to her leash and kept walking.  
  
It was a little bit more than surprising to find him sitting behind her the next morning in her Media and Communications class.  
  
The presence of Oliver Queen at CCU had managed to turn more than a few heads, but most students kept to themselves, either for lack of anything to say or just generally not caring about some washed up rich boy who would inevitably find himself bored of learning within the week. However, Oliver himself seemed closed off in a way that struck Iris as fairly odd. A month went by, and sometimes Oliver would beat even her strict and pristine little butt to class. While they hadn’t exactly acknowledged the other’s presence in that time, Iris would still find herself a little peeved when she walked in only to find him sitting, notes out and prepared for the lecture that day.  
  
He'd dropped his pen once, the offending item rolling down beneath her seat. Iris had automatically leaned over to pick it up, turning to hand it back to him and meeting his baby blue-eyed gaze for the first time, only just barely catching herself staring back as he offered her a small smile and a nod of thanks. Iris whipped back around at the sound of a cough from the other side of the room, practically shaking the small smile off her own face.  
  
_Oh, damn those dimples._  
  
Iris West knew better than to let some boy with big arms, an electric gaze and perfect teeth tug her away from her daily normal. Morning walks with Opal, class until noon, internship at the _Central City Picture_ , dinner with dad and Barry and every other evening a shift at Jitters before coming back home and doing another lap around the campus with Opal in tow.  
  
Iris West knew better, but Opal, apparently, had not.  
  
One minute, Opal was waiting dutifully by while Iris caught another classmate up on a missed lecture and the next, all 6 pounds and 11 ounces of Yorkie was tugging free of Iris’s grasp and rushing across the street to the man walking out of the library, cars slamming on their breaks and honking after the small dog her wake. The man in question, Oliver Queen himself, scooped Opal up off the ground, seemingly unbothered by the small puppy licking his face and the frantic owner of said puppy gripping his arm and repeatedly thanking him.  
  
She only offered to buy him a coffee because her discount at Jitters was stellar and there was a part of her that didn’t expect him to actually say yes, but an hour later, there they sat at a little corner table in Jitters, yapping away for hours until just before closing time.  
  
Before long, that small corner table in the back of Jitters became their table.  
  
Iris learned that the death of his father and the almost-overdose made him reevaluate some things in his own life, so he decided to finish up classes he never got around to the first time around and get his Master’s in business so he could help his mother run Queen Incorporated. She learned that he was sober now, and generally tried to shy away from the rest of the students to avoid those types of temptations. The first time she witnessed him genuinely laugh was when she told him that the rest of the students just thought he was being a rich snob. After that, she tried to make him laugh as much as possible. She found out that it was pretty easy to do.  
  
Oliver Queen, surprise of all surprises, could make her laugh, too. Sometimes, without even trying. It was as simple as letting him take reign of Opal’s leash and listening to him occasionally talk to Op as she stopped to sniff at a fire hydrant, or a dead squirrel, or bark at a passerby on a bike.  
  
The third time she let him walk her and Opal back home, she let him give her a kiss goodnight, interrupted only by the yip coming from Opal, signifying that it was time for dinner.  
  
After that, well… maybe a certain pink toothbrush made its way into his apartment and beside his sink. A couple of pairs of underwear. A brand new doggie bed for Opal that she _told_ him not to waste his money on but he did so, anyway. When her internship at the _Picture_ was running a little late, it just made sense to let Oliver keep Opal overnight. She had always made such a fuss about going back and forth between her house and his apartment, anyway.  
  
Dating Oliver Queen was a whirlwind. Three weeks before graduation, he’d dumped her with a note attached to Opal’s doggie bed sitting outside her front door with a questioning look from Joe West that she knew would have granted her immediate access to witness her father try to frame party boy Oliver Queen with the arrest of a lifetime and a couple death threats to boot.  
  
He dumped her and high-tailed back to Star City _with a fucking note_. One of those stupid ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ notes that she had only ever witnessed in the movies. Oliver Queen was an asshole.  
  
Truth be told, it was entirely Opal’s fault that Iris currently found herself at the edge of the bed in the only bedroom she’d ever known, surrounded by boxes of things that were packed and ready for the move, her thumb hovering over the call button just under Oliver Queen’s name. She hadn’t ever got around to deleting the number… She knew better than to ever call it, of course, and had simply (conveniently?) forgotten to clear the contact information with every phone upgrade over the past 7 years. In fact, maybe this was something that would be better off in a text, or maybe even a Facebook message. If Iris had the time to spare, perhaps she would have opted for the informal route, but with just a few days left to spare before the move, she knew it couldn’t wait. He’d either answer or she’d go straight to his voicemail, right?  
  
Iris took a deep breath, pressed talk, shut her eyes and lifted the phone to her ear, practically straining to hear the ringing over her rapid heartbeat.  
  
One ring, two, three, and then…  
  
_“Iris?”_  
  
She forgotten what his voice sounded like up until that exact moment. She’d read somewhere that the first memory that you lost was the sound of someone’s voice, but the low, gravelly hilt brought her immediately back to the day he’d first spoken her name, and suddenly, Iris froze up all over again.  
  
_“Iris?”_ came the voice once more, softer than before, and she turned to look at the clock on her nightstand, realizing that it was late and she had probably woken him up and now he was probably trying to keep his voice down so he didn’t wake up his wife or girlfriend or – _“Is that you?”_  
  
“Yes!” Iris yipped immediately, wincing at the sound of her own voice. “Yeah, hi. Um… wow I didn’t think this through very well, I’m sorry.” He didn’t speak, letting Iris take a breath before continuing. “I, uh, I’m taking a job in Metropolis. For the _Daily Planet_.” Her throat tightened as she swallowed down a memory of the two of them tangled up in bed, actually talking about where they saw themselves ten years down the road, and while she was achieving her dreams of reporting, she wondered if he was doing what he loved to do, too. Hell, he probably wasn’t even thinking about that at all – probably didn’t even remember much about her, save for her name that he clearly still had in his contact book.  
  
Refusing to let herself go further down memory lane, she quickly continued. “I’ll just get this over with, feel free to stop me or just hang up, but I can’t take Opal with me. My dad and Wally can’t take her, one of my friends is allergic, the other can’t have dogs in her apartment and I’m just completely at a loss. I don’t want to just give her up to someone I don’t know and I’m already feeling guilty enough about uprooting her but she always really lo–” she almost said that _l-o-v-e-d_ word, “– liked you. Trusted you. She’s getting old, I just don’t want her to just spend the last few years in complete unfamiliarity.”  
  
She paused at the silence, quickly pulling the phone from her ear and watching the seconds continue to tick, knowing he was still on the line. After another beat, she stood up and sighed, pacing the rug at the end of her bed. “You can just tell me no. It’s been years since we’ve actually… you know. This was just my last shot in the dark.”  
  
The continued silence was deafening, and with one final glance at the seconds ticking by, eating up her minutes, she dropped back down to the edge of her bed, defeated. “This was stupid, I’m sorry, Oliver. Goodnight.” Her thumb hit the end button and Iris tossed the phone to her pillow, Opal barely stirring from her own slumber as she made her way to the bathroom to take a shower.  
  
Three minutes later, as Iris washed the stress of the phonecall away, the phone upon the pillow buzzed twice.  
  
**I can be in Central City tomorrow afternoon. Will you two join me for coffee?**  
  
A photo followed a moment later, one she hadn’t even remembered having existed – and from the looks of it, one she hadn’t even been aware that was even taken; Iris’s face tucked into the corner of Oliver’s shoulder, laughing hysterically at something while he made a disgusted (albeit very fake-disgusted) face while Opal licked at some food that appeared to be stuck in his beard.  
  
**Please say yes.**


End file.
